To be honest, I’ve never been a big fan of actor Ryan Reynolds. For whatever reason I’ve just never cared for him and tend to skip movies he stars in at the theater. Sometimes this pays off like with the dreadful Green Lantern but sometimes it almost “bites me in the butt” like with Deadpool. I very nearly didn’t go see this hilarious, raunchy superhero comedy that’s got a ton of heart when it came out in 2016 and only happened to go one night when I tagged-along with some friends. And while I hold that I still won’t go see any Ryan Reynolds movies in the theater, the one caveat to that rule is, “Unless he’s starring in a Deadpool film.”
In Deadpool, Reynolds plays Wade Wilson aka Deadpool, an ex-military mercenary who meets the girl of his dreams Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) and then soon after finds out he has inoperable cancer. But, since this is a superhero movie and not a romantic comedy, Wilson goes off to get an experimental treatment to try and cure his disease. This treatment works but has some side-effects like making him look a bit like Freddy Kruger in addition to giving him super-regenerative powers. Shoot him and he heals, cut off a hand and it’ll grows back.
Angry that he’s lost the girl of his dreams Wilson vows to hunt down those who gave him the treatment while at the same time trying to introduce his new Kruger face to Vanessa.
I think the reason that Deadpool works is that it’s highly quotable, the action is completely over-the-top and it sends up the last decade of superhero movies in a fun way. Whereas most superhero movies are at least outwardly family friendly, Deadpool is not. It’s R-rated, there’s gore, nudity and lots of swearing. While in most superhero movies the heroes are out to save the world from some menace, in Deadpool Wilson’s just trying to get his girl back.
Ironically, for being R-rated Deadpool is probably a teenagers ideal superhero. Wade’s fearless since no one can really hurt him and he always has the right thing to say. It also helps that his girlfriend is drop-dead gorgeous.
In many ways Deadpool is more villain than hero. He doesn’t have any problems with causing accidents on major highways or bringing down a gigantic construction site when he does battles with the bad guys. If in other films the superheroes take pains to establish that their fight is about to take place in an abandoned part of the city, then one of the major fights in Deadpool takes place on a busy freeway with cars crashing, body parts being severed and villains going “splat” on highway signs.
Because of the huge success of Deadpool, the movie reportedly cost less than $60 million to make yet earned back something like $780 million at the box office, comes Deadpool 2.
This time Deadpool’s out to save a kid (Julian Dennison) with superpowers whom superhero from the future Cable (Josh Brolin) is out to eliminate. But Deadpool’s got help from both Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebran) and Colossus (voiced by Stefan Kapicic) from the first movie along with a new X-Force including Domnio (Zazie Beetz), Bedlam (Terry Crews), Shatterstar (Lewis Tan) and fan-favorite from the trailer alone regular-guy Peter (Rob Delaney).
Ironically, when the character of Deadpool first appeared in the pages of New Mutants back in 1991 no one cared too much about him. He was just another 1990s style super-powered killing machine of which there were loads of. Back then, everyone was too concerned with picking up a copy of the comic with the first appearance of Cable than anything Deadpool was in since Cable was the most popular Marvel character of the early 1990s.
Now things have changed, so much so that, if the amount of t-shirts I see people wearing is any indication, Deadpool is one of the most popular superhero characters out there while poor Cable is lucky to land a guest-starring role in a movie of a character he first helped introduce some 27 years ago.
I guess there are worse fates, just ask Howard the Duck.
